Self-Publishing Survey - Some results

romanceauthor22 · Jan 6, 2014

The survey closes January 11, but so far I have 689 respondents. I was hoping to hit 500 so I'm thrilled with the response to the survey.

Here are some interesting (but not surprising) results that I'm seeing:
___

50.51% of respondents earned over $10,000

93% of respondents write fiction
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Of the authors who made over $50,000 in 2013, 96.93% of their bestselling books were part of a series or serial.

100% for those who made over $500,000

Of those, 68% made one or more books in the series free

88.24% of those who made over $500,000 made one or more of their books free
___

Of respondents who earned over $50,000 in 2013

33.53% priced their bestselling books $2.99
41.32% priced their bestselling books at $3.99
25.15% priced their bestselling books at $4.99

Of respondents who earned $0 - $10,000 in 2013

16.37% priced their bestselling books $.99
5.06% priced their bestselling books $1.99
47.92% priced their bestselling books $2.99
23.21% priced their bestselling books $3.99
8.63% priced their bestselling books $4.99
___

Of the respondents who earned $0 - $10,000 in 2013

32.53% have made one or more in their series free
41.87% have not made any books in their series free
25.60% have not written a series

Joe_Nobody · Jan 6, 2014

I'm not surprised by those numbers at all. Thanks for posting.

buz · Jan 6, 2014

Did you get any information on genre, by any chance?

Pushingfordream · Jan 6, 2014

50.51% of respondents earned over $10,000 - this seems very high percentage wise

romanceauthor22 · Jan 6, 2014

buzhidao said:
Did you get any information on genre, by any chance?

I will include the genre findings when I do the full write up. But so far, just from my observation, it looks like adult contemporary romance is edging out the rest of the genres.

romanceauthor22 · Jan 6, 2014

Pushingfordream said:
50.51% of respondents earned over $10,000 - this seems very high percentage wise

After reading so many studies that said most self-published authors didn't earn more than $500 a year, yes, I found this a bit surprising myself.

But I'm a self-published author with only 3 paid novels out (I have 2 free novellas) and I've made 6 figures the last 2 years running. My thought was there had to be more writers like me out there than I was being lead to believe. That's one of the reasons I decided to do the survey. We hear about the self-published authors making millions but what about the ones in the middle? All the authors who most readers have never heard of.

Lady MacBeth · Jan 6, 2014

Interesting results. Thanks for sharing.

Polenth · Jan 6, 2014

Pushingfordream said:
50.51% of respondents earned over $10,000 - this seems very high percentage wise

It's about what you'd expect from a survey. You have to ask who will find a survey advertised on writing groups. It won't be the person who published without really being involved in the industry in any way. It won't be the person who tried self-publishing and decided writing wasn't for them.

And then you have to ask who will fill out the survey when they see it. People who've done really well are likely to want to tell the world, but people who haven't are likely not to. Announcing the earnings of the survey before it's finished may increase this trend, because who'd want to admit they earnt $10 if everyone else out there is earning $10,000?

What you may get from a survey is a decent idea of which strategies are being used by those who earn the higher amounts, as they're more likely to fill out the survey. What you don't get is a good idea of what percentage of the total self-publishing population those high earners make up.

romanceauthor22 · Jan 16, 2014

Self-Publishing Survey Results

I just wanted to let you know I posted the results to the Self-Publishing Survey I conducted and had 822 respondents.

It's pretty lengthy--a 29 page document--so I embedded the PDF in the post. But you can download and read at your leisure.

http://theseasonforromance.com/wordpress/2014/01/the-self-publishing-survey-results-its-a-brave-new-world/

Ann Joyce · Jan 16, 2014

Beverly, Thank you so much for all the hard work you put into this survey. I read over it rather quickly, but downloaded the PDF for later reading. Thanks for that too. I found your survey to be very interesting and informative. I also like that you didn't negate the hard work involved in self-publishing.

I realize an undertaking of this nature took many hours and I want you to know I appreciate you doing that for our benefit. Not being a prolific writer, I feel a renewed stirring to be more disciplined in that regard. All the best!

romanceauthor22 · Jan 16, 2014

Ann Joyce said:
Beverly, Thank you so much for all the hard work you put into this survey. I read over it rather quickly, but downloaded the PDF for later reading. Thanks for that too. I found your survey to be very interesting and informative. I also like that you didn't negate the hard work involved in self-publishing.

I realize an undertaking of this nature took many hours and I want you to know I appreciate you doing that for our benefit. Not being a prolific writer, I feel a renewed stirring to be more disciplined in that regard. All the best!

Thanks, Ann!

WriterBN · Jan 16, 2014

Thanks for undertaking this and for sharing your results! I've downloaded it and will read it as soon as I get a chance.

Sheryl Nantus · Jan 16, 2014

I'm a little confused by your phrasing. You list "traditionally published" and then "digital-first".

I've got books with Carina Press which is a digital-first press. But obviously it's a "traditional publisher", right? Does that mean I fall into... which category?

???

romanceauthor22 · Jan 16, 2014

Sheryl Nantus said:
I'm a little confused by your phrasing. You list "traditionally published" and then "digital-first".

I've got books with Carina Press which is a digital-first press. But obviously it's a "traditional publisher", right? Does that mean I fall into... which category?

???

Carina Press would be a digital-first publisher. A traditional contract would be a print contract.

Spell-it-out · Jan 16, 2014

Bev, that's a great report. Thanks for taking the time to compile and post it.

ShaunHorton · Jan 16, 2014

Reading it now. Looks very interesting. One thing though, It's Joe Konrath, not Jon.

romanceauthor22 · Jan 16, 2014

ShaunHorton said:
Reading it now. Looks very interesting. One thing though, It's Joe Konrath, not Jon.

Damn! Thanks. Just fixed it.

Old Hack · Jan 16, 2014

romanceauthor22 said:
Carina Press would be a digital-first publisher. A traditional contract would be a print contract.

It might be wise to clarify that in your survey results, if you haven't already (I can't download it at the moment, so I might be telling you to do things you've already done, in which case, my apologies).

Note that it's "trade" publishing, no "traditional"; many digital-first publishers also provide print contracts; big publishers offer digital contracts too; some print contracts are far from traditional; and so on and so forth. I know I'm nitpicking, but using the correct, established terminology really helps avoid confusion and maintain clarity--and that makes useful things like your survey even more useful for the writers it's intended to help.

Old Hack · Jan 17, 2014

At last, I've got the survey downloaded (the problem was with my connection, not your survey). I have a few questions.

Very early in the survey results you state,

The 822 respondents fall into the following three categories:

Never been published

New York or traditionally published

Digital first published

But earlier you write,

I created a survey to find out how self-published authors—those fairly serious about writing and publishing for profit—fared in 2013

You don't include any self-published writers in your breakdown of the 822 writers you mention. Do they exist across all three categories? It would be very useful to know how many out of each of those original three categories have also self-published. Or are all respondents self-published? That can't be the case, as your first category is "Never been published".

I'm very confused by this, I'm afraid.

I like that you provide a breakdown of the respondents by genre, but as far as I can see that isn't tied in at all to the sales by genre you've provided: it would be very useful to see what proportion of writers in each genre is making a decent number of sales from their hard work.

How were the respondents selected? Did they (mostly) self-select having read your blog? Did you publicise the research anywhere, and if so, where? (I'm interested in knowing what sort of selection bias there is here.)

I have concerns about several of the conclusions you reach in your survey. For example, this one:

According to the results (Figure 15), self publication has allowed 27.84% of respondents to quit their day job and write full-time.Most of these authors (me included) would not have been able to do this with either a traditional or digital-first publisher.

I don't see how you know that most authors concerned would not have been able to quit their day jobs if they'd worked with trade publishers, and hadn't self-published. There's no real basis for that conclusion: you've done well through self-publishing, but you could have done just as well had you continued to trade publish, and you might even have done better. You might not have done so, of course, and you could be right in your assumption: my point is that you can't safely reach that conclusion when relying on the data you present here.

Several of the conclusions you came to seem to have similarly shaky foundations. It could be that I need to read it more closely; it could be that you've reached conclusions which aren't proved by the data you've collected. But for now, and for me, those problems mean I don't feel I can rely on your conclusions, I'm afraid.

shadowwalker · Jan 17, 2014

I agree with Old Hack about the conclusions. I started reading through the article and it was confusing (terminology, numbers, conclusions). And I'm not sure there wasn't some bias in how you came to your conclusions when you stated at the beginning that you conducted the survey "to dispel the notion" - I would have preferred to see an unbiased "fact finding" sort of survey. I was also confused by the inclusion of "never published" - if they've never published, what information could they have that would prove/disprove the earnings potential of SP? I think it was great that you attempted the survey, and appreciate the work involved; I just wish it had been done in a more scientific/objective manner.

romanceauthor22 · Jan 17, 2014

In this case 'never been published' meant never been either traditionally published OR published with a digital-first publisher. Everyone in the survey is self-publishing so I didn't want to use that in the term.

romanceauthor22 · Jan 17, 2014

Some authors will find value in the survey and others won't. Which is okay. I didn't state it was scientific. I put it out to anyone who cared to take the survey, asked everyone I knew who was self-publishing to share the survey with other self-published authors and crunched the numbers. For me, it did prove I wasn't the only one doing well self-publishing without making millions.

And believe me, I don't take offense to the criticism. Everyone is going to have their own take on the results. If the stats had proved me wrong, I would have been the first to admit it. But as it turned out, the stats said authors were doing even better than I thought.

shadowwalker · Jan 17, 2014

romanceauthor22 said:
In this case 'never been published' meant never been either traditionally published OR published with a digital-first publisher. Everyone in the survey is self-publishing so I didn't want to use that in the term.

Was it stated anywhere that they were all self-published? Clarity is really important in things like this, so people reading it know exactly what the parameters were. Otherwise all kinds of assumptions (and conclusions) are made which probably shouldn't be.

veinglory · Jan 17, 2014

I was confused to as to why unpublished writers would be covered. Saying self-pubbed are not published is, well....

romanceauthor22 · Jan 17, 2014

Changed.

Going forward, I don't think anyone will be confused anymore in regard to terminology.

Self-Publishing Survey - Some results

romanceauthor22

Joe_Nobody

buz

edits all posts at least four times

Pushingfordream

Writing about life!

romanceauthor22

romanceauthor22

Lady MacBeth

Out, damn'd spot! out, I say.

Polenth

Mushroom

romanceauthor22

Ann Joyce

It's all about grace

romanceauthor22

WriterBN

Sheryl Nantus

Holding out for a Superhero...

romanceauthor22

Spell-it-out

I'm gonna give all my secrets away

ShaunHorton

AW's resident Velociraptor

romanceauthor22

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman

shadowwalker

empty-nester!

romanceauthor22

romanceauthor22

shadowwalker

empty-nester!

veinglory

volitare nequeo

romanceauthor22